This invention relates to sailboats and more specifically to those utilizing roller furling equipment to furl or roller reef any or all of the head, stay and main sails.
Roller furling and roller reefing allow setting and reefing of the sails from the cockpit and thus make practical single-handed and foul-weather sailing; however certain drawbacks have occured with previous equipment. Roller reefing (boom rolling) teachings are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,561,253 to Wells-Coates; and 3,285,215 to Potter. Most arrangements for roller furling utilize a steel cable sewn into the luff or leading edge of the sail. Such teachings can be found in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,602,180 to Holmes; 3,749,042 and 3,749,043, both to Jackson; and 4,034,694 to Dismukes. Using that technique the luff wire is stretched behind the headstay in the case of a headsail or behind the mast in the case of a main or mizzen sail. When the luff wire is rotated by any one of several means, the sail is wound around the luff wire. The primary disadvantage of this lies in the fact that the luff wire will sag even when tensioned highly and when it sags to leeward changes the shape and position of the sail, causing it to be less efficient. In addition, in the case of a headsail the balance of tension between the headstay and headsail luff wire is critical to prevent them from winding together. Various attempts have been made to correct this winding tendency. The first was to utilize the luff wire as the headstay but this prevented taking down the sail in an emergency and later, more successful, efforts utilize special shapes, either replacing the headstay or surrounding it, that have grooves to accept the luff of the sail. A U.S. Pat. No. 3,802,373 to Lagerquist shows an encapsulating sleeve for the head stay of a sailboat and the sleeve provides a track for the luff cable of aforesaid however, the sail is not a roller furled sail. Some disclosures of roll furling around a mast can be seen in British Pat. No. 601,605 and French Pat. No. 787,237.
Recently, a method of furling the main sail inside the mast so that the luff cannot sag to leeward has been patented. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,835,804 to Jackson; 4,030,439 to Hood; 4,090,461 to Rusich; and 4,057,023 to Hood et al. This method requires an expensive replacement or modification of the mast and boom when applied to existing boats and requires special heavy mast sections when installed on new boats.
A special boom arrangement for use with roll furled sails is disclosed in Hood et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,059,063.